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PART FOUR Interregional Patterns of Culture and Contact, 1200–1550 CHAPTER 12 Mongol Eurasia and Its Aftermath, 1200–1500 CHAPTER 13 Tropical Africa and Asia, 1200–1500 CHAPTER 14 The Latin West, 1200–1500 CHAPTER 15 The Maritime Revolution, to 1550 I n Eurasia, overland trade along the Silk Road, which had begun before the Roman and Han empires, reached its peak during the era of the Mongol empires. Beginning in 1206 with the rise of Genghis Khan, the Mongols tied Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and East Asia together with threads of con- quest and trade centered on Central and Inner Asia. For over a century and a half, some communities thrived on the continental connections that the Mongols fostered, while others groaned under the tax burdens and physical devastation of Mongol rule. But whether for good or ill, Mongol power was based on the skills, strategies, and technologies of the overland trade and life on the steppes. The impact of the Mongols was also felt by societies that escaped con- quest. In Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean coastal areas of the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Japan, fear of Mongol attack stimulated societies to or- ganize more intensively in their own defense, accelerating processes of ur- banization, technological development, and political centralization that in many cases were already underway. By 1500, Mongol dominance was past, and new powers had emerged. A new Chinese empire, the Ming, was expanding its influence in Southeast 291 14820_PO4_291-293_r1ek.qxd 4/2/04 8:16 PM Page 291

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Page 1: PART FOUR Interregional Patterns of Culture and Contact, … · 2014-08-14 · PART FOUR Interregional Patterns of Culture and Contact, 1200–1550 CHAPTER 12 Mongol Eurasia and Its

PART FOUR

Interregional Patterns of Culture and Contact,1200–1550

CHAPTER 12Mongol Eurasia and ItsAftermath, 1200–1500

CHAPTER 13Tropical Africa and Asia,1200–1500

CHAPTER 14The Latin West, 1200–1500

CHAPTER 15The Maritime Revolution, to 1550

In Eurasia, overland trade along the Silk Road, which had begun before theRoman and Han empires, reached its peak during the era of the Mongol

empires. Beginning in 1206 with the rise of Genghis Khan, the Mongols tiedEurope, the Middle East, Russia, and East Asia together with threads of con-quest and trade centered on Central and Inner Asia. For over a century and ahalf, some communities thrived on the continental connections that theMongols fostered, while others groaned under the tax burdens and physicaldevastation of Mongol rule. But whether for good or ill, Mongol power wasbased on the skills, strategies, and technologies of the overland trade and lifeon the steppes.

The impact of the Mongols was also felt by societies that escaped con-quest. In Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean coastal areas of the Middle East,Southeast Asia, and Japan, fear of Mongol attack stimulated societies to or-ganize more intensively in their own defense, accelerating processes of ur-banization, technological development, and political centralization that inmany cases were already underway.

By 1500, Mongol dominance was past, and new powers had emerged. Anew Chinese empire, the Ming, was expanding its influence in Southeast

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Asia. The Ottomans had captured Constantinopleand overthrown the Byzantine Empire. And theChristian monarchs who had defeated theMuslims in Spain and Portugal were laying thefoundations of new overseas empires. With the fall ofthe Mongol Empire, Central and Inner Asia were no longer atthe center of Eurasian trade.

As the overland trade of Eurasia faded, merchants,soldiers, and explorers took to the seas.The most spectacular of the earlystate-sponsored long-distance oceanvoyages were undertaken by the Chineseadmiral Zheng He. The 1300s and 1400s also sawAfrican exploration of the Atlantic and Polynesian colonizationof the central and eastern Pacific. By 1500 the navigator Christo-pher Columbus, sailing for Spain, had reached the Americas; withintwenty-five years a Portuguese ship would sail all the way aroundthe world. New sailing technologies and a sounder knowledge of thesize of the globe and the contours of its shorelines made sub-SaharanAfrica, the Indian Ocean, Asia, Europe, and finally the Americas more ac-cessible to each other than ever before.

The great overland routes of Eurasia had generated massive wealth in EastAsia and a growing hunger for commerce in Europe. These factors animated thedevelopment of the sea trade, too. Exposure to the achievements, wealth, andresources of societies in the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia enticed theemerging European monarchies to pursue further exploration and control of theseas.

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12 Mongol Eurasia and Its Aftermath,1200–1500

CHAPTER OUTLINEThe Rise of the Mongols, 1200–1260

The Mongols and Islam, 1260–1500

Regional Responses in Western Eurasia

Mongol Domination in China, 1271–1368

The Early Ming Empire, 1368–1500

Centralization and Militarism in East Asia, 1200–1500

DIVERSITY AND DOMINANCE: Mongol Politics, Mongol Women

ENVIRONMENT AND TECHNOLOGY: From Gunpowder to Guns

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When the Mongol leader Temüjin˚ was a boy, a ri-val group murdered his father. Temüjin’s mother

tried to shelter him (and protect him from dogs,which he feared), but she could not find a safe haven.At fifteen Temüjin sought refuge with the leader of theKeraits˚, one of Mongolia’s many warring confedera-tions. The Keraits spoke Turkic and respected bothChristianity and Buddhism. Gifted with strength, cour-age, and intelligence, Temüjin learned the importanceof religious tolerance, the necessity of dealing harshlywith enemies, and the variety of Central Asia’s culturaland economic traditions.

In 1206 the Mongols and their allies acknowl-edged Temüjin as Genghis Khan˚, or supreme leader.His advisers included speakers of many languagesand adherents of all the major religions of the MiddleEast and East Asia. His deathbed speech, which can-not be literally true even though a contemporaryrecorded it, captures the strategy behind Mongol suc-cess: “If you want to retain your possessions and con-quer your enemies, you must make your subjectssubmit willingly and unite your diverse energies to asingle end.”1 By implementing this strategy, GenghisKhan became the most famous conqueror in history,initiating an expansion of Mongol dominion that by1250 stretched from Poland to northern China.

Scholars today stress the immense impact Temüjinand his successors had on the later medieval world,and the positive developments that transpired underMongol rule. European and Asian sources of the time,however, vilify the Mongols as agents of death, suffer-ing, and conflagration, a still-common viewpoint basedon reliable accounts of horrible massacres.

The tremendous extent of the Mongol Empirepromoted the movement of people and ideas fromone end of Eurasia to the other. Specialized skills de-veloped in different parts of the world spread rapidlythroughout the Mongol domains. Trade routes im-proved, markets expanded, and the demand for prod-ucts grew. Trade on the Silk Road, which had declined

with the fall of the Tang Empire (see Chapter 10),revived.

During their period of domination, lasting from1218 to about 1350 in western Eurasia and to 1368 inChina, the Mongols focused on specific economicand strategic interests and usually permitted localcultures to survive and continue to develop. In someregions, local reactions to Mongol domination andunification sowed seeds of regional and ethnic iden-tity that grew extensively in the period of Mongol de-cline. Societies in regions as widely separated asRussia, Iran, China, Korea, and Japan benefited fromthe Mongol stimulation of economic and cultural ex-change and also found in their opposition to theMongols new bases for political consolidation and af-firmation of cultural difference.

As you read this chapter, ask yourself the follow-ing questions:

● What accounts for the magnitude and speed of theMongol conquests?

● What benefits resulted from the integration of Eura-sia in the Mongol Empire?

● How did the effect of Mongol rule on Russia and thelands of Islam differ from its effect on East Asia?

● In what ways did the Ming Empire continue or dis-continue Mongol practices?

THE RISE OF THE MONGOLS,1200–1260

The environment, economic life, cultural institutions,and political traditions of the steppes (prairies) and

deserts of Central and Inner Asia contributed to the ex-pansion and contraction of empires. The Mongol Empireowes much of its success to these long-term conditions.Yet the interplay of environment and technology, on theone hand, and specific human actions, on the other,cannot easily be determined. The way of life known asnomadism gives rise to imperial expansion only occa-sionally, and historians disagree about what triggersthese episodes. In the case of the Mongols, a precise as-sessment of the personal contributions of Genghis Khanand his followers remains uncertain.

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Descriptions of steppe nomadsfrom as early as the Greekwriter Herodotus in the sixthcentury B.C.E. portray them assuperb riders, herdsmen, and

hunters. Traditional accounts maintain that the Mongolsput their infants on goats to accustom them to riding.Moving regularly and efficiently with flocks and herds re-quired firm decision making, and the independence ofindividual Mongols and their families made this deci-sion making public, with many voices being heard. Acouncil with representatives from powerful families rati-fied the decisions of the leader, the khan. Yet people whodisagreed with a decision could strike off on their own.Even during military campaigns, warriors moved withtheir families and possessions.

Menial work in camps fell to slaves—people whowere either captured during warfare or who soughtrefuge in slavery to escape starvation. Weak groups se-cured land rights and protection from strong groups byproviding them with slaves, livestock, weapons, silk, orcash. More powerful groups, such as Genghis Khan’s ex-tended family and descendants, lived almost entirely offtribute, so they spent less time and fewer resources onherding and more on warfare designed to secure greatertribute.

Leading families combined resources and solidifiedintergroup alliances through arranged marriages andother acts, a process that helped generate political feder-ations. Marriages were arranged in childhood—in Temü-jin’s case, at the age of eight—and children thus becamepawns of diplomacy. Women from prestigious familiescould wield power in negotiation and management,though they ran the risk of assassination or executionjust like men (see Diversity and Dominance: MongolPolitics, Mongol Women).

Families often included believers in two or more re-ligions, most commonly Buddhism, Christianity, or Is-lam. Virtually all Mongols observed the practices oftraditional shamanism, rituals in which special individ-uals visited and influenced the supernatural world.Whatever their faith, the Mongols believed in worldrulership by a khan who, with the aid of his shamans,could speak to and for an ultimate god, represented asSky or Heaven. This universal ruler transcended particu-lar cultures and dominated them all.

The Mongols were not unfamiliar with agriculture orunwilling to use products grown by farmers, but theirideal was self-sufficiency. Since their wanderings withtheir herds normally took them far from any farming re-gion, self-sufficiency dictated foods they could providefor themselves—primarily meat and milk—and clothing

Nomadism inCentral andInner Asia

made from felt, leather, and furs. Women oversaw thebreeding and birthing of livestock and the preparationof furs.

Mongol dependency on settled regions related pri-marily to iron for bridles, stirrups, cart fittings, andweapons. They acquired iron implements in trade andreworked them to suit their purposes. As early as the600s the Turks, a related pastoral people, had large iron-working stations south of the Altai Mountains in westernMongolia. Neighboring agricultural states tried to limitthe export of iron but never succeeded. Indeed, CentralAsians developed improved techniques of iron forging,which the agricultural regions then adopted. The Mon-gols revered iron and the secrets of ironworking. Temüjinmeans “blacksmith,” and several of his prominent fol-lowers were the sons of blacksmiths.

Steppe nomads situated near settled areas tradedwool, leather, and horses for wood, cotton and cotton-seed, silk, vegetables, grain, and tea. An appreciation ofthe value of permanent settlements for growing grainand cotton, as well as for working iron, led some no-madic groups to establish villages at strategic points, of-ten with the help of migrants from the agriculturalregions. The frontier regions east of the Caspian Sea andin northern China thus became economically and cul-turally diverse. Despite their interdependence, nomadsand farmers often came into conflict. On rare occasionsuch conflicts escalated into full-scale invasions inwhich the martial prowess of the nomads usually re-sulted in at least temporary victory.

Shortly after his acclamationin 1206 Genghis set out to con-vince the kingdoms of Eurasiato pay him tribute. Two decadesof Mongol aggression followed.

By 1209 he had forced the Tanggut rulers of northwestChina to submit, and in 1215 he captured the Jin capitalof Yanjing, today known as Beijing. He began to attackthe west in 1219 with a full-scale invasion of a CentralAsian state centered on Khwarezm, an oasis area east ofthe Caspian Sea. By 1221 he had overwhelmed most ofIran. By this time his conquests had gained such mo-mentum that Genghis did not personally participate inall campaigns, and subordinate generals sometimes ledthe Mongol armies, which increasingly contained non-Mongol nomads as well.

Genghis Khan died in 1227. His son and successor,the Great Khan Ögödei˚ (see Figure 12.1), continued to

The MongolConquests,1215–1283

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Ögödei (ERG-uh-day)

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The Rise of the Mongols, 1200–1260 297

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C H R O N O L O G YCentral Asia and Korea, Japan, and

Mongolia and China Middle East Russia Southeast Asia

1206 Temüjin chosenGenghis Khan of theMongols

1227 Death of GenghisKhan

1227–1241 Reign ofGreat Khan Ögödei

1234 Mongols conquernorthern China

1271 Founding of YuanEmpire

1279 Mongol conquestof Southern Song

1368 Ming Empirefounded

1403–1424 Reign ofYongle

1405–1433 Voyages ofZheng He

1449 Mongol attack onBeijing

1221–1223 FirstMongol attacks in Iran

1250 Mamluk regimecontrols Egypt and Syria

1258 Mongols sackBaghdad and kill thecaliph

1260 Mamluks defeat Il-khans at Ain Jalut

1295 Il-khan Ghazanconverts to Islam

1349 End of Il-khan rule

ca. 1350 Egypt infectedby plague

1370–1405 Reign ofTimur

1402 Timur defeatsOttoman sultan

1453 Ottomans captureConstantinople

1221–1223 FirstMongol attacks onRussia

1240 Mongols sack Kiev

1242 Alexander Nevskiidefeats TeutonicKnights

1260 War between Il-khans and Golden Horde

1346 Plague outbreak atKaffa

1462–1505 Ivan IIIestablishes authority astsar. Moscow emerges asmajor political center.

1258 Mongols conquerKoryo rulers in Korea

1274, 1281 Mongolsattack Japan

1283 Yuan invadesAnnam

1293 Yuan attacks Java

1333–1338 End ofKamakura Shogunatein Japan, beginning ofAshikaga

1392 Founding of Yikingdom in Korea

1471–1500 Annamconquers Champa

1200

1300

1400

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W omen in nomadic societies often enjoy more freedomand wield greater influence than women in villages

and towns. The wives or mothers of Mongol rulers tradition-ally managed state affairs during the interregnum betweena ruler’s death and the selection of a successor. Princes andheads of ministries treated such regents with great defer-ence and obeyed their commands without question. Since afemale regent could not herself succeed to the position ofkhan, her political machinations usually focused on gainingthe succession for a son or other male relative.

The History of the World-Conqueror by the Iranian histo-rian ’Ata-Malik Juvaini, elegantly written in Persian duringthe 1250s, combines a glorification of the Mongol rulerswith an unflinching picture of the cruelties and devastationinflicted by their conquests. As a Muslim, he explains theseevents as God’s punishment for Muslim sins. But this relig-ious viewpoint does not detract from his frank depiction ofthe instruments of Mongol domination and the fate ofthose who tried to resist.

When [Qa’an, i.e., Ögödei, Genghis Khan’s son and successor]was on his hunting ground someone brought him two orthree water-melons. None of his attendants had any [money]or garments available, but Möge Khatun [his wife], who waspresent, had two pearls in her ears like the two bright stars ofthe Lesser Bear when rendered auspicious by conjunctionwith the radiant moon. Qa’an ordered these pearls to begiven to the man. But as they were very precious she said:“This man does not know their worth and value: it is like giv-ing saffron to a donkey. If he is commanded to come to theordu [residence] tomorrow, he will there receive [money] andclothing.” “He is a poor man,” said Qa’an, “and cannot bear towait until tomorrow. And whither should these pearls go?They too will return to us in the end. . . .”

At Qa’an’s command she gave the pearls to the poor man,and he went away rejoicing and sold them for a small sum,round about two thousand dinars [Note: this is actually avery large sum]. The buyer was very pleased and thought tohimself: “I have acquired two fine jewels fit for a present tothe Emperor. He is rarely brought such gifts as these.” He ac-

cordingly took the pearls to the Emperor, and at that timeMöge Khatun was with him. Qa’an took the pearls and said:“Did we not say they would come back to us?” . . . And hedistinguished the bearer with all kinds of favours. . . .

When the decree of God Almighty had been executed andthe Monarch of the World . . . . Qa’an had passed away,Güyük, his eldest son, had not returned from the campaignagainst the Qifchaq, and therefore in accordance with prece-dent the dispatch of orders and the assembling of the peopletook place at the door of the ordu, or palace of his wife,Möge Khatun, who, in accordance with the Mongol custom,had come to him from his father, Chinggiz-Khan. But sinceTöregene Khatun was the mother of his eldest sons and wasmoreover shrewder and more sagacious than Möge Khatun,she sent messages to the princes, i.e. the brothers andnephews of the Qa’an, and told them of what had happenedand of the death of Qa’an, and said that until a Khan wasappointed by agreement someone would have to be rulerand leader in order that the business of state might notbe neglected nor the affairs of the commonweal throwninto confusion; in order, too, that the army and the courtmight be kept under control and the interests of the peopleprotected.

Chaghatai [another of Genghis’s sons] and the otherprinces sent representatives to say that Töregene Khatun wasthe mother of the princes who had a right to the Khanate;therefore, until a quriltai [family council] was held, it was shethat should direct the affairs of the state, and the old minis-ters should remain in the service of the Court, so that the oldand new yasas [imperial decrees] might not be changed fromwhat was the law.

Now Töregene Khatun was a very shrewd and capablewoman, and her position was greatly strengthened by thisunity and concord. And when Möge Khatun shortly followedin the wake of Qa’an [i.e., died], by means of finesse and cun-ning she obtained control of all the affairs of state and wonover the hearts of her relatives by all kind of favours andkindnesses and by the sending of gifts and presents. And forthe most part strangers and kindred, family and army in-clined towards her, and submitted themselves obediently and

D I V E R S I T Y A N D D O M I N A N C E

MONGOL POLITICS, MONGOL WOMEN

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gladly to her commands and prohibitions, and came underher sway. . . .

And when Güyük came to his mother, he took no part inaffairs of state, and Töregene Khatun still executed the de-crees of the Empire although the Khanate was settled uponher son. But when two or three months had passed and theson was somewhat estranged from his mother on account ofFatima [see below], the decree of God the Almighty and Glo-rious was fulfilled and Töregene passed away. . . .

And at that time there was a woman called Fatima, whohad acquired great influence in the service of TöregeneKhatun and to whose counsel and capability were entrustedall affairs of state. . . .

At the time of the capture of the place [Mashhad, Iran] inwhich there lies the Holy Shrine of ‘Ali ar-Riza [the eighthShi‘ite Imam], she was carried off into captivity. It sochanced she came to Qara-Qorum [Karakorum], where shewas a procuress in the market; and in the arts of shrewdnessand cunning the wily Delilah could have been her pupil. Dur-ing the reign of Qa’an she had constant access to the ordu ofTöregene Khatun; and when times changed and Chinqai [ahigh official] withdrew from the scene, she enjoyed evengreater favour, and her influence became paramount; so thatshe became the sharer of intimate confidences and the de-pository of hidden secrets, and the ministers were debarredfrom executing business, and she was free to issue com-mands and prohibitions. And from every side the grandeessought her protection, especially the grandees of Khorasan[where Mashhad is located]. And there also came to her cer-tain of the sayyids [i.e., descendants of Muhammad] of theHoly Shrine [the tomb of ‘Ali ar-Riza], for she claimed to beof the race of the great sayyids.

When Güyük succeeded to the Khanate, a certain nativeof Samarqand, who was said to be an ’Alid [i.e., descendantof Muhammad], one Shira . . . hinted that Fatima had be-witched Köten [another of Töregene Khatun’s sons], whichwas why he was so indisposed. When Köten returned, themalady from which he was suffering grew worse, and he senta messenger to his brother Güyük to say that he had been at-tacked by that illness because of Fatima’s magic and that ifanything happened to him Güyük should seek retributionfrom her. Following on this message there came tidings ofKöten’s death. Chinqai, who was now a person of authority,reminded Güyük of the message, and he sent an envoy to hismother to fetch Fatima. His mother refused to let her go say-ing that she would bring her herself. He sent again severaltimes, and each time she refused him in a different way. As aresult his relations with his mother became very bad, and hesent the man from Samarqand with instructions to bring Fa-tima by force if his mother should still delay in sending heror find some reason for refusing. It being no longer possibleto excuse herself, she agreed to send Fatima; and shortly af-

terwards she passed away. Fatima was brought face to facewith Güyük, and was kept naked, and in bonds, and hungryand thirsty for many days and nights; she was plied with allmanner of violence, severity, harshness and intimidation; andat last she confessed to the calumny of the slanderous tale-bearer and avowed her falseness . . . She was rolled up in asheet of felt and thrown into the river.

And everyone who was connected with her perished also.And messengers were sent to fetch certain persons who hadcome from the Shrine and claimed to be related to her; andthey suffered many annoyances.

This was the year in which Güyük Khan went to join hisfather, and it was then that ’Ali Khoja of Emil accused Shiraof the same crime, namely of bewitching Khoja. He was castinto bonds and chains and remained imprisoned for nearlytwo years, during which time by reason of all manner ofquestioning and punishment he despaired of the pleasure oflife. And when he recognized and knew of a certainty thatthis was [his] punishment he resigned himself to death andsurrendering his body to the will of Fate and Destiny con-fessed to a crime which he had not committed. He too wascast into the river, and his wives and children were put to thesword. . . .

[I]n that same year, in a happy and auspicious hour, theKhanate had been settled upon Mengü Qa’an. . . . And whenKhoja was brought to the Qa’an, a messenger was sent to’Ali Khoja, who was one of his courtiers. Some other personbrought the same accusation against him, and Mengü-Qa’anordered him to be beaten from the left and the right until allhis limbs were crushed; and so he died. And his wives andchildren were cast into the baseness of slavery and disgracedand humiliated.

And it is not hidden from the wise and intelligent man,who looks at these matters in the light of understanding andreflects and ponders on them, that the end of treacheryand the conclusion of deceit, which spring from evil waysand wicked pretensions, is shameful and the terminationthereof unlucky. . . . God preserve us from the like positionsand from trespassing into the region of deliberate offenses!

QUESTIONS FOR ANALYSIS1. How do the stories of Töregene Khatun and Fatima dif-

fer in their presentation of female roles?2. What does the passage indicate concerning the respect

of the Mongols for women? 3. What does Güyük’s refusal to take over the affairs of

state while his mother is still alive imply?

Source: Reprinted by permission of the publisher from ’Ala-ad-Din ’Ata-Malik Juvaini,The History of the World-Conqueror, vol. 1, trans. John Andrew Boyle (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1958), 211–212, 239–248. Copyright © 1958 by ManchesterUniversity Press.

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assault China. He destroyed the Tanggut and then the Jinand put their territories under Mongol governors. In1236 Genghis’s grandson Batu˚ (d. 1255) attacked Rus-sian territories, took control of all the towns along theVolga˚ River, and within five years conquered KievanRussia, Moscow, Poland, and Hungary. Europe wouldhave suffered grave damage in 1241 had not the death ofÖgödei compelled the Mongol forces to suspend theircampaign. With Genghis’s grandson Güyük˚ installed asthe new Great Khan, the conquests resumed. By 1234 theMongols controlled most of northern China and werethreatening the Southern Song. In the Middle East theysacked Baghdad in 1258 and executed the last Abbasidcaliph (see Chapter 8).

Although the Mongols’ original objective may havebeen tribute, the scale and success of the conquests cre-ated a new historical situation. Ögödei unquestionablysought territorial rule. Between 1240 and 1260 his impe-rial capital at Karakorum˚ attracted merchants, ambas-sadors, missionaries, and adventurers from all overEurasia. A European who visited in 1246 found the cityisolated but well populated and cosmopolitan.

The Mongol Empire remained united until about1265, as the Great Khan in Mongolia exercised authorityover the khans of the Golden Horde in Russia, the khansof the Jagadai domains in Central Asia, and the Il-khans

in Iran (see Map 12.1). After Ögödei’s death in 1241 fam-ily unity began to unravel. When Khubilai˚ declared him-self Great Khan in 1265, the descendants of Jagadai andother branches of the family refused to accept him. Thedestruction of Karakorum in the ensuing fighting con-tributed to Khubilai’s transferring his court to the old Jincapital that is now Beijing. In 1271 he declared himselffounder of the Yuan Empire.

Jagadai’s descendants, who continued to dominateCentral Asia, had much closer relations with Turkic-speaking nomads than did their kinsmen farther east.This, plus a continuing hatred of Khubilai and the Yuan,contributed to the strengthening of Central Asia as an in-dependent Mongol center and to the adoption of Islamin the western territories.

After the Yuan destroyed the Southern Song (seeChapter 10) in 1279, Mongol troops crossed south of theRed River and attacked Annam—now northern Vietnam.They occupied Hanoi three times and then withdrew af-ter arranging for the payment of tribute. In 1283 Khubi-lai’s forces invaded Champa in what is now southernVietnam and made it a tribute nation as well. A plan toinvade Java by sea failed, as did two invasions of Japan in1274 and 1281.

In tactical terms, the Mongols did not usually out-number their enemies, but like all steppe nomads formany centuries, they displayed extraordinary abilities

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on horseback and utilized superior bows. The CentralAsian bow, made strong by laminated layers of wood,leather, and bone, could shoot one-third farther (andwas significantly more difficult to pull) than the bowsused by their enemies in the settled lands.

Mounted Mongol archers rarely expended all ofthe five dozen or more arrows they carried in theirquivers. As the battle opened, they shot arrows from adistance to decimate enemy marksmen. Then they gal-loped against the enemy’s infantry to fight with sword,lance, javelin, and mace. The Mongol cavalry met itsmatch only at the Battle of Ain Jalut˚, where it con-fronted Mamluk forces whose war techniques sharedsome of the same traditions (see Chapter 8).

To penetrate fortifications, the Mongols fired flam-ing arrows and hurled enormous projectiles—some-times flaming—from catapults. The first Mongolcatapults, built on Chinese models, transported easilybut had short range and poor accuracy. During westerncampaigns in Central Asia, the Mongols encountered acatapult design that was half again as powerful as theChinese model. They used this improved weapon againstthe cities of Iran and Iraq.

Cities that resisted Mongol attack faced mass slaugh-ter or starvation under siege. Timely surrender broughtfood, shelter, and protection. The bloodletting the Mon-gols inflicted on cities such as Balkh˚ (in present-daynorthern Afghanistan) spread terror and made it easier

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for the Mongols to persuade cities to surrender. Eachconquered area helped swell the “Mongol” armies. Incampaigns in the Middle East a small Mongol elite over-saw armies of recently recruited Turks and Iranians.

Commercial integration underMongol rule strongly affectedboth the eastern and westernwings of the empire. Like their

aristocratic predecessors in Inner Asia, Mongol nobleshad the exclusive right to wear silk, almost all of whichcame from China. Trade under Mongol dominion broughtnew styles and huge quantities of silk westward, not justfor clothing but also for wall hangings and furnishings.Abundant silk fed the luxury trade in the Middle East andEurope. Artistic motifs from Japan and Tibet reached asfar as England and Morocco. Porcelain was another east-ern luxury product that became important in trade andstrongly influenced later cultural tastes in the Islamicworld.

Traders from all over Eurasia enjoyed the benefits ofMongol control. Merchants encountered ambassadors,scholars, and missionaries over the long routes to theMongol courts. Some of the resulting travel literature,like the account of the Venetian Marco Polo˚ (1254–1324), freely mixed the fantastic with the factual. Storiesof fantastic wealth stimulated a European ambition tofind easier routes to Asia.

Exchange also held great dangers. In southwesternChina bubonic plague had festered in Yunnan provincesince the early Tang period. In the mid-thirteenth cen-tury Mongol troops established a garrison in Yunnanwhose military and supply traffic provided the means forflea-infested rats to carry the plague into central China,northwestern China, and Central Asia. Marmots andother desert rodents along the routes became infectedand passed the disease to dogs and people. The caravantraffic infected the oasis towns. The plague incapacitatedthe Mongol army during their assault on the city ofKaffa˚ in Crimea˚ in 1346. They withdrew, but the plagueremained. From Kaffa rats infected by fleas reached Eu-rope and Egypt by ship (see Chapter 14).

Typhus, influenza, and smallpox traveled with theplague. The combination of these and other diseasescreated what is often called the “great pandemic” of1347–1352 and spread devastation far in excess of whatthe Mongols inflicted in war. Peace and trade, not con-quest, gave rise to the great pandemic.

Overland Tradeand the Plague

THE MONGOLS AND ISLAM,1260–1500

From the perspective of Mongol imperial history, theissue of which branches of the family espoused Islam

and which did not mostly concerns their political rival-ries and their respective quests for allies. From thestandpoint of the history of Islam, however, recoveryfrom the political, religious, and physical devastationthat culminated in the destruction of the Abbasidcaliphate in Baghdad in 1258 attests to the vitality of thefaith and the ability of Muslims to overcome adversity.Within fifty years of its darkest hour, Islam had reemergedas a potent ideological and political force.

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By 1260 the Il-khan˚ state, es-tablished by Genghis’s grand-son Hülegü, controlled parts ofArmenia and all of Azerbaijan,

Mesopotamia, and Iran. The Mongols who had con-quered southern Russia settled north of the Caspian Seaand established the capital of their Khanate of theGolden Horde (also called the Kipchak˚ Khanate) atSarai˚ on the Volga River. There they established domi-nance over the indigenous Muslim Turkic population,both settled and pastoral.

Some members of the Mongol imperial family hadprofessed Islam before the Mongol assault on the MiddleEast, and Turkic Muslims had served the family in vari-ous capacities. Indeed, Hülegü himself, though a Bud-dhist, had a trusted Shi’ite adviser and granted privilegesto the Shi’ites. As a whole, however, the Mongols underHülegü’s command came only slowly to Islam.

The passage of time did little to reconcile Islamicdoctrines with Mongol ways. Muslims abhorred theMongols’ worship of idols, a fundamental part of shaman-ism. Furthermore, Mongol law specified slaughteringanimals without spilling blood, which involved open-ing the chest and stopping the heart. This horrifiedMuslims, who were forbidden to consume blood andslaughtered animals by slitting their throats and drain-ing the blood.

Islam became a point of inter-Mongol tension whenBatu’s successor as leader of the Golden Horde declaredhimself a Muslim, swore to avenge the murder of the Ab-basid caliph, and laid claim to the Caucasus—the regionbetween the Black and Caspian Seas—which the Il-khans also claimed (see Map 12.2).

Some European leaders believed that if they helpedthe non-Muslim Il-khans repel the Golden Horde fromthe Caucasus, the Il-khans would help them relieve Mus-lim pressure on the crusader states in Syria, Lebanon,and Palestine (see Chapter 8). This resulted in a brief cor-respondence between the Il-khan court and PopeNicholas IV (r. 1288–1292) and a diplomatic mission thatsent two Christian Turks to western Europe as Il-khanambassadors in the late 1200s. Many Christian crusadersenlisted in the Il-khan effort, but the pope later excom-municated some for doing so.

The Golden Horde responded by seeking an alliancewith the Muslim Mamluks in Egypt (see Chapter 8)against both the crusaders and the Il-khans. These com-plicated efforts effectively extended the life of the cru-sader states; the Mamluks did not finish ejecting thecrusaders until the fifteenth century.

Mongol Rivalry

Before the Europeans’ diplomatic efforts could pro-duce a formal alliance, however, a new Il-khan ruler,Ghazan˚ (1271–1304), declared himself a Muslim in1295. Conflicting indications of Sunni and Shi’ite affilia-tion on such things as coins indicate that the Il-khansdid not pay too much attention to theological matters.Nor is it clear whether the many Muslim Turkic nomadswho served alongside the Mongols in the army wereShi’ite or Sunni.

Like the Turks before them (seeChapter 8), the Il-khans gradu-ally came to appreciate the tra-ditional urban culture of the

Muslim territories they ruled. Though nomads contin-ued to serve in their armies, the Il-khans used tax farm-ing, a fiscal method developed earlier in the Middle East,to extract maximum wealth from their domain. The gov-ernment sold tax-collecting contracts to small partner-ships, mostly consisting of merchants who might alsowork together to finance caravans, small industries, ormilitary expeditions. The corporations that offered tocollect the most revenue for the government won thecontracts. They could use whatever methods they choseand could keep anything over the contracted amount.

Initially, the cost of collecting taxes fell, but over thelong term, the exorbitant rates the tax farmers chargeddrove many landowners into debt and servitude. Agri-cultural productivity declined. The government had dif-ficulty procuring supplies for the soldiers and resorted totaking land to grow its own grain. Like land held by reli-gious trusts, this land paid no taxes. Thus the tax baseshrank even as the demands of the army and the Mongolnobility continued to grow.

Ghazan faced many economic problems. Citing thehumane values of Islam, he promised to reduce taxes,but the need for revenues kept the decrease from beingpermanent. He also witnessed the failure of a predeces-sor’s experiment with the Chinese practice of using pa-per money. Having no previous exposure to papermoney, the Il-khan’s subjects responded negatively. Theeconomy quickly sank into a depression that lasted be-yond the end of the Il-khan state in 1349. High taxescaused widespread popular unrest and resentment. Mon-gol nobles competed fiercely among themselves for thedecreasing revenues, and fighting among Mongol fac-tions destabilized the government.

In the mid-fourteenth century Mongols from theGolden Horde moved through the Caucasus into the

Islam and the State

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western regions of the Il-khan Empire and then intothe Il-khan’s central territory, Azerbaijan, briefly occu-pying its major cities. At the same time a new power wasemerging to the east, in the Central Asian Khanate of Ja-gadai (see Map 12.1). The leader Timur˚, known to Eu-ropeans as Tamerlane, skillfully maneuvered himselfinto command of the Jagadai forces and launched cam-paigns into western Eurasia, apparently seeing himselfas a new Genghis Khan. By ethnic background he was aTurk with only an in-law relationship to the family of theMongol conqueror. This prevented him from assumingthe title khan, but not from sacking the Muslim sul-tanate of Delhi in northern India in 1398 or defeating

the sultan of the rising Ottoman Empire in Anatolia in1402. By that time he had subdued much of the MiddleEast, and he was reportedly preparing to march onChina when he died in 1405. The Timurids (descendantsof Timur) could not hold the empire together, but theylaid the groundwork for the establishment in India of aMuslim Mongol-Turkic regime, the Mughals, in the six-teenth century.

The Il-khans of Iran and Timu-rids of Central Asia presidedover a brilliant cultural flower-ing in Iran, Afghanistan, andCentral Asia based on the shar-

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ing of artistic trends, administrative practices, and polit-ical ideas between Iran and China, the dominant urbancivilizations at opposite ends of the Silk Road. The dom-inant cultural tendencies of the Il-khan and Timurid pe-riods are Muslim, however. Although Timur died beforehe could reunite Iran and China, his forcible concentra-tion of Middle Eastern scholars, artists, and craftsmen inhis capital, Samarkand, fostered advancement in somespecific activities under his descendants.

The historian Juvaini˚ (d. 1283), the literary figurewho noted Genghis Khan’s deathbed speech, came fromthe city of Balkh, which the Mongols had devastated in1221. His family switched their allegiance to the Mon-gols, and both Juvaini and his older brother assumedhigh government posts. The Il-khan Hülegü, seeking toimmortalize and justify the Mongol conquest of the Mid-dle East, enthusiastically supported Juvaini’s writing.This resulted in the first comprehensive narrative of therise of the Mongols under Genghis Khan.

Juvaini combined a florid style with historical objec-tivity—he often criticized the Mongols—and served as aninspiration to Rashid al-Din˚, Ghazan’s prime minister,when he attempted the first history of the world. Rashidal-Din’s work included the earliest known general historyof Europe, derived from conversations with Europeanmonks, and a detailed description of China based on in-formation from an important Chinese Muslim officialstationed in Iran. The miniature paintings that accom-panied some copies of Rashid al-Din’s work included de-pictions of European and Chinese people and eventsand reflected the artistic traditions of both cultures. TheChinese techniques of composition helped inauguratethe greatest period of Islamic miniature painting underthe Timurids.

Rashid al-Din traveled widely and collaborated withadministrators from other parts of the far-flung Mongoldominions. His idea that government should be in ac-cord with the moral principles of the majority of thepopulation buttressed Ghazan’s adherence to Islam. Ad-ministratively, however, Ghazan did not restrict himselfto Muslim precedents but employed financial and mon-etary techniques that roughly resembled those in use inRussia and China.

Under the Timurids, the tradition of the Il-khan his-torians continued. After conquering Damascus, Timurhimself met there with the greatest historian of the age,Ibn Khaldun˚ (1332–1406), a Tunisian. In a scene remi-niscent of Ghazan’s answering Rashid al-Din’s questionson the history of the Mongols, Timur and Ibn Khaldunexchanged historical, philosophical, and geographicalviewpoints. Like Genghis, Timur saw himself as a worldconqueror. At their capitals of Samarkand and Herat (inwestern Afghanistan), later Timurid rulers sponsoredhistorical writing in both Persian and Turkish.

A Shi’ite scholar named Nasir al-Din Tusi˚ repre-sents the beginning of Mongol interest in the scientifictraditions of the Muslim lands. Nasir al-Din may have

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joined the entourage of Hülegü during a campaign in1256 against the Assassins, a Shi’ite religious sect derivedfrom the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt and at odds with hismore mainstream Shi’ite views (see Chapter 8). Nasir al-Din wrote on history, poetry, ethics, and religion, butmade his most outstanding contributions in mathemat-ics and cosmology. Following Omar Khayyam˚ (1038?–1131), a poet and mathematician of the Seljuk˚ period,

he laid new foundations for algebra and trigonometry.Some followers working at an observatory built for Nasiral-Din at Maragheh˚, near the Il-khan capital of Tabriz,used the new mathematical techniques to solve a funda-mental problem in classical cosmology.

Islamic scholars had preserved and elaborated onthe insights of the Greeks in astronomy and mathemat-ics and adopted the cosmological model of Ptolemy˚,which assumed a universe with the earth at its centersurrounded by the sun, moon, and planets traveling inconcentric circular orbits. However, the motions of theseorbiting bodies did not coincide with predictions basedon circular orbits. Astronomers and mathematicians hadlong sought a mathematical explanation for the move-ments that they observed.

Nasir al-Din proposed a model based on the idea ofsmall circles rotating within a large circle. One of his stu-dents reconciled this model with the ancient Greek ideaof epicycles (small circles rotating around a point on alarger circle) to explain the movement of the moonaround the earth. The mathematical tables and geomet-ric models devised by this student somehow becameknown to Nicholas Copernicus (1473–1543), a Polishmonk and astronomer. Copernicus adopted the lunarmodel as his own, virtually without revision. He thenproposed the model of lunar movement developed un-der the Il-khans as the proper model for planetary move-ment as well—but with the planets circling the sun.

Sponsorship of observational astronomy and themaking of calendars had engaged the interest of earlierCentral Asian rulers, particularly the Uighurs˚ and theSeljuks. Under the Il-khans, the astronomers of Maraghehexcelled in predicting lunar and solar eclipses. Astrolabes,armillary spheres, three-dimensional quadrants, andother instruments acquired new precision.

The remarkably accurate eclipse predictions and ta-bles prepared by Il-khan and Timurid astronomersreached the hostile Mamluk lands in Arabic translation.Byzantine monks took them to Constantinople andtranslated them into Greek, while Christian scholarsworking in Muslim Spain translated them into Latin. InIndia the sultan of Delhi ordered them translated intoSanskrit. The Great Khan Khubilai (see below) sum-moned a team of Iranians to Beijing to build an observa-tory for him. Timur’s grandson Ulugh Beg˚ (1394–1449),who mixed science and rule, constructed a great obser-vatory in Samarkand and actively participated in com-piling observational tables that were later translated intoLatin and used by European astronomers.

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A further advance made under Ulugh Beg camefrom the mathematician Ghiyas al-Din Jamshid al-Kashi˚, who noted that Chinese astronomers had longused one ten-thousandth of a day as a unit in calculatingthe occurrence of a new moon. This seems to have in-spired him to employ decimal fractions, by which quan-tities less than one could be represented by a marker toshow place. Al-Kashi’s proposed value for pi (π) was farmore precise than any previously calculated. This inno-vation arrived in Europe by way of Constantinople,where a Greek translation of al-Kashi’s work appeared inthe fifteenth century.

REGIONAL RESPONSES

IN WESTERN EURASIA

Safe, reliable overland trade throughout Eurasia bene-fited Mongol ruling centers and commercial cities

along the length of the Silk Road. But the countryside,ravaged by conquest, sporadically continuing violence,and heavy taxes, suffered terribly. As Mongol controlweakened, regional forces in Russia, eastern Europe, andAnatolia reasserted themselves. All were influenced byMongol predecessors, and all had to respond to the so-cial and economic changes of the Mongol era. Some-times this meant collaborating with the Mongols. Atother times it meant using local ethnic or religious tradi-tions to resist or roll back Mongol influence.

The Golden Horde establishedby Genghis’s grandson Batuafter his defeat of a combinedRussian and Kipchak (a Turkic

people) army in 1223 started as a unified state but grad-ually lost its unity as some districts crystallized intosmaller khanates. The White Horde, for instance, cameto rule much of southeastern Russia in the fifteenth cen-tury, and the Crimean khanate on the northern shoreof the Black Sea succumbed to Russian invasion onlyin 1783.

Trade routes east and west across the steppe andnorth and south along the rivers of Russia and Ukraineconferred importance on certain trading entrepôts, asthey had under Kievan Russia (see Chapter 9). TheMongols of the Golden Horde settled at (Old) Sarai, just

Russia and Rulefrom Afar

north of where the Volga flows into the Caspian Sea (seeMap 12.1). They ruled their Russian domains to thenorth and east from afar. To facilitate their control, theygranted privileges to the Orthodox Church, which thenhelped reconcile the Russian people to their distantmasters.

The politics of language played a role in subsequenthistory. Old Church Slavonic, an ecclesiastical language,revived; but Russian steadily acquired greater importanceand eventually became the dominant written language.Russian scholars shunned Byzantine Greek, previouslythe main written tongue, even after the Golden Hordepermitted renewed contacts with Constantinople. TheGolden Horde enlisted Russian princes to act as theiragents, primarily as tax collectors and census takers. Somehad to visit the court of the Great Khans at Karakorum tosecure the documents upon which their authority wasbased.

The flow of silver and gold into Mongol handsstarved the local economy of precious metal. Like the Il-khans, the khans of the Golden Horde attempted to in-troduce paper money as a response to the currencyshortage. This had little effect in a largely nonmonetaryeconomy, but the experiment left such a vivid memorythat the Russian word for money (denga˚) comes fromthe Mongolian word for the stamp (tamga˚) used to cre-ate paper currency. But commerce depended more ondirect exchange of goods than on currency transactions.

Alexander Nevskii˚ (ca. 1220–1263), the prince ofNovgorod, persuaded some fellow princes to submit tothe Mongols. In return, the Mongols favored both Nov-gorod and the emerging town of Moscow, ruled byAlexander’s son Daniel. These towns eclipsed devastatedKiev as political, cultural, and economic centers. This, inturn, drew people northward to open new agriculturalland far from the Mongol steppe lands to the southwest.Decentralization continued in the 1300s, with Moscowonly very gradually becoming Russia’s dominant politi-cal center (see Map 12.2).

Russia was deeply affected by the Mongol presence.Bubonic plague became endemic among rodents in theCrimea. Ukraine˚, a fertile and well-populated region inthe late Kievan period (1000–1230), suffered severe pop-ulation loss as Mongol armies passed through on cam-paigns against eastern Europe and raided villages tocollect taxes.

Historians debate the Mongol impact on Russia.Some see the destructiveness of the Mongol conquestsand the subsequent domination of the khans as isolating

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Russia and parts of eastern Europe from developmentsto the west. These historians refer to the “Mongol yoke”and hypothesize a sluggish economy and dormant cul-ture under the Mongols.

Others point out that Kiev declined economicallywell before the Mongols struck and that the Kievanprinces had already ceased to mint coins. Moreover, theRussian territories regularly paid their heavy taxes in sil-ver. These payments indicate both economic surplusesand an ability to convert goods into cash. The burden-some taxes stemmed less from the Mongols than fromtheir tax collectors, Russian princes who often ex-empted their own lands and shifted the load to thepeasants.

As for Russia’s cultural isolation, skeptics observethat before the Mongol invasion, the powerful and con-structive role played by the Orthodox Church orientedRussia primarily toward Byzantium (see Chapter 9). Thissituation discouraged but did not eliminate contactswith western Europe, which probably would have be-come stronger after the fall of Constantinople to theOttomans in 1453 regardless of Mongol influence.

The traditional structure of local government survivedMongol rule, as did the Russian princely families, who con-tinued to battle among themselves for dominance. TheMongols merely added a new player to those struggles.

Ivan˚ III, the prince of Moscow (r. 1462–1505), estab-lished himself as an autocratic ruler in the late 1400s. Be-fore Ivan, the title tsar (from “caesar”), of Byzantineorigin, applied only to foreign rulers, whether the em-perors of Byzantium or the Turkic khans of the steppe.Ivan’s use of the title, which began early in his reign,probably represents an effort to establish a basis for le-gitimate rule with the decline of the Golden Horde anddisappearance of the Byzantine Empire.

The interplay between religion,political maneuvering, and newexpressions of local identity af-fected Anatolia and parts ofEurope confronted with the

Mongol challenge as well. Raised in Sicily, the Holy Ro-man Emperor Frederick II (r. 1212–1250) appreciatedMuslim culture and did not recoil from negotiating withMuslim rulers. When the pope threatened to excommu-nicate him unless he went on a crusade, Frederick nom-inally regained Jerusalem through a flimsy treaty withthe Mamluk sultan in Egypt. This did not satisfy thepope, and the preoccupation of both pope and emperorwith their quarrel left Hungary, Poland, and other partsof eastern Europe to deal with the Mongol onslaught ontheir own. Many princes capitulated and went to (Old)Sarai to offer their submission of Batu.

The Teutonic˚ Knights, however, resisted. Like theKnights Templar in the Middle East (see Chapter 8), theGerman-speaking Teutonic Knights had a crusadinggoal: to Christianize the Slavic and Kipchak populationsof northern Europe, whose territories they colonizedwith thousands of German-speaking settlers. Having aninterest in protecting Slav territory from German expan-sion, Alexander Nevskii cooperated in the Mongol cam-paigns against the Teutonic Knights and their Finnishallies. The latter suffered a catastrophic setback in 1242,

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when many broke through ice on Lake Chud (see Map12.2) and drowned. This destroyed the power of theKnights, and the northern Crusades virtually ceased.

The “Mongol” armies encountered by the Euro-peans were barely Mongol other than in most commandpositions. Mongol recruitment and conscription createdan international force of Mongols, Turks, Chinese, Irani-ans, a few Europeans, and at least one Englishman, whohad gone to the Middle East as a crusader but joined theMongols and served in Hungary.

Initial wild theories describing the Mongols as com-ing from Hell or from the caves where Alexander theGreat confined the monsters of antiquity gave way tomore sophisticated understanding as European em-bassies to the Golden Horde, the Il-khan, and the GreatKhan in Mongolia reported on Mongol trade routes andthe internal structure of Mongol rule. In some quartersterror gave way to awe and even idealization of Mongolwealth and power. Europeans learned about diplomaticpassports, coal mining, movable type, high-temperaturemetallurgy, higher mathematics, gunpowder, and, in thefourteenth century, the casting and use of bronze can-non. Yet with the outbreak of bubonic plague in the late1340s (see Chapter 14), the memory of Mongol terrorhelped ignite religious speculation that God might bepunishing the Christians of eastern and central Europewith a series of tribulations.

In the fourteenth century several regions, most no-tably Lithuania˚ (see Map 12.2), escaped the Mongolgrip. When Russia fell to the Mongols and eastern Eu-rope was first invaded, Lithuania had experienced anunprecedented centralization and military strengthen-ing. Like Alexander Nevskii, the Lithuanian leadersmaintained their independence by cooperating withthe Mongols. In the late 1300s Lithuania capitalizedon its privileged position to dominate its neighbors—particularly Poland—and ended the Teutonic Knights’hope of regaining power.

In the Balkans independent and well-organizedkingdoms separated themselves from the chaos of theByzantine Empire and thrived amidst the political un-certainties of the Mongol period. The Serbian kingStephen Dushan (ca. 1308–1355) proved to be the mosteffective leader. Seizing power from his father in 1331, hetook advantage of Byzantine weakness to raise the arch-bishop of Serbia to the rank of an independent patriarch.In 1346 the patriarch crowned him “tsar and autocrat ofthe Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Albanians,” a title thatfairly represents the wide extent of his rule. As in the caseof Timur, however, his kingdom declined after his death

in 1355 and disappeared entirely after a defeat by the Ot-tomans at the battle of Kosovo in 1389.

The Turkic nomads from whom the rulers of the Ottoman Empire descended had come to Anatolia inthe same wave of Turkic migrations as the Seljuks (seeChapter 8). Though centered in Iran and preoccupiedwith quarrels with the Golden Horde, the Il-khans ex-erted great influence in eastern Anatolia. However, anumber of small Turkic principalities emerged fartherto the west. The Ottoman principality was situated inthe northwest, close to the Sea of Marmara. This notonly put them in a position to cross into Europe andtake part in the internal dynastic struggles of the declin-ing Byzantine state, but it also attracted Muslim reli-gious warriors who wished to extend the frontiers ofIslam in battle with the Christians. Though the Ottomansultan suffered defeat at the hands of Timur in 1402, thiswas only a temporary setback. In 1453 Sultan Mehmet IIcaptured Constantinople and brought the ByzantineEmpire to an end.

The Ottoman sultans, like the rulers of Russia,Lithuania, and Serbia, seized the political opportunitythat arose with the decay of Mongol power. The new andpowerful states they created put strong emphasis on re-ligious and linguistic identity, factors that the Mongolsthemselves did not stress. As we shall see, Mongol rulestimulated similar reactions in the lands of east andsoutheast Asia.

MONGOL DOMINATION IN CHINA, 1271–1368

After the Mongols conquered northern China in the1230s, Great Khan Ögödei told a newly recruited

Confucian adviser that he planned to turn the heavilypopulated North China Plain into a pasture for livestock.The adviser reacted calmly but argued that taxing thecities and villages would bring greater wealth. The GreatKhan agreed, but he imposed the oppressive tax-farmingsystem in use in the Il-khan Empire, rather than thefixed-rate method traditional to China.

The Chinese suffered under this system during theearly years, but Mongol rule under the Yuan Empire, es-tablished by Genghis Khan’s grandson Khubilai in 1271,also brought benefits: secure routes of transport andcommunication; exchange of experts and advisers be-tween eastern and western Eurasia; and transmission ofinformation, ideas, and skills.

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Just as the Il-khans in Iran andthe Golden Horde in Russiacame to accept many aspectsof Muslim and Christian cul-

ture, so the Mongols in China sought to construct a fruit-ful synthesis of the Mongol and Chinese religious andmoral traditions. Khubilai Khan gave his oldest son aChinese name and had Confucianists participate in theboy’s education. In public announcements and the craft-ing of laws, he took Confucian conventions into consid-eration. Buddhist and Daoist leaders visited the GreatKhan and came away believing that they had all but con-vinced him to accept their beliefs.

The teachings of Buddhist priests from Tibet calledlamas˚ became increasingly popular with some Mongolrulers in the 1200s and 1300s. Their idea of a militantuniversal ruler bringing the whole world under controlof the Buddha and thus pushing it nearer to salvationmirrored an ancient Central Asia idea of universal ruler-ship.

Beijing, the Yuan capital, became the center of cul-tural and economic life. Where Karakorum had been re-mote from any major settled area, Beijing served as theeastern terminus of the caravan routes that began nearTabriz, the Il-khan capital, and (Old) Sarai, the GoldenHorde capital. An imperial horseback courier system uti-lizing hundreds of stations maintained close communi-cations along routes that were generally policed and safefor travelers. Ambassadors and merchants arriving inBeijing found a city that was much more Chinese incharacter than its predecessor in Mongolia.

Called Great Capital (Dadu) or City of the Khan(khan-balikh˚, Marco Polo’s “Cambaluc”), Khubilai’scapital featured massive Chinese-style walls of rammedearth, a tiny portion of which can still be seen. Khubilai’sengineers widened the streets and developed linkedlakes and artificial islands at the city’s northwest edge toform a closed imperial complex, the Forbidden City. Forhis summer retreat, Khubilai maintained the palace andparks at Shangdu˚, now in Inner Mongolia. This was“Xanadu˚” celebrated by the English poet Samuel TaylorColeridge, its “stately pleasure dome” the hunting pre-serve where Khubilai and his courtiers practiced ridingand shooting.

“China” as we think of it today did not exist beforethe Mongols. Before they reunified it, China had been di-vided into three separate states (see Chapter 10). TheTanggut and Jin empires controlled the north, the South-

The Yuan Empire,1279–1368

ern Song most of the area south of the Yellow River.These states had different languages, writing systems,forms of government, and elite cultures. The GreatKhans destroyed all three and encouraged the restora-tion or preservation of many features of Chinese govern-ment and society, thereby reuniting China in whatproved to be a permanent fashion.

By law, Mongols had the highest social ranking. Be-low them came, in order, Central Asians and MiddleEasterners, then northern Chinese, and finally southernChinese. This apparent racial ranking also reflected a hi-erarchy of functions, the Mongols being the empire’swarriors, the Central Asians and Middle Easterners itscensus takers and tax collectors. The northern Chineseoutranked the southern Chinese because they had comeunder Mongol control almost two generations earlier.

Though Khubilai included some “Confucians” (un-der the Yuan, a formal and hereditary status) in govern-ment, their position compared poorly with their statusas elite officeholders in pre-Mongol times. The Confu-cians criticized the favoring of merchants, many ofwhom were from the Middle East or Central Asia, andphysicians. They regarded doctors as mere technicians,or even heretical practitioners of Daoist mysticism. TheYuan encouraged medicine and began the long processof integrating Chinese medical and herbal knowledgewith western approaches derived from Greco-Romanand Muslim sources.

Like the Il-khan rulers in the Middle East, the Yuanrulers concentrated on counting the population and col-lecting taxes. They brought Persian, Arab, and Uighuradministrators to China to staff the offices of taxationand finance, and Muslim scholars worked at calendarmaking and astronomy. For census taking and adminis-tration, the Mongols organized all of China into provinces.Central appointment of provincial governors, tax collec-tors, and garrison commanders marked a radical changeby systematizing government control in all parts of thecountry.

The scarcity of contemporary records and the hostil-ity of later Chinese writers make examination of theYuan economy difficult. Many cities seem to have pros-pered: in north China by being on the caravan routes; inthe interior by being on the Grand Canal; and along thecoast by participation in maritime grain shipments fromsouth China. The reintegration of East Asia (though notJapan) with the overland Eurasian trade, which hadlapsed with the fall of the Tang (see Chapter 10), stimu-lated the urban economies.

The privileges and prestige that merchants enjoyedchanged urban life and the economy of China. With only

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a limited number of government posts open to the oldChinese elite, great families that had previously spentfortunes on educating sons for government servicesought other outlets. Many gentry families chose com-merce, despite its lesser prestige. Corporations—investorgroups that behaved as single commercial and legalunits and shared the risk of doing business—handledmost economic activities, starting with financing cara-vans and expanding into tax farming and lending moneyto the Mongol aristocracy. Central Asians and MiddleEasterners headed most corporations in China in theearly Yuan period; but as Chinese bought shares, mostcorporations acquired mixed membership, or even com-plete Chinese ownership.

The agricultural base, damaged by war, overtaxation,and the passage of armies, could not satisfy the financialneeds of the Mongol aristocracy. Following earlier prece-dent, the imperial government issued paper money tomake up the shortfall. But the massive scale of the Yuanexperiment led people to doubt the value of the notes,which were unsecured. Copper coinage partially offsetthe failure of the paper currency. During the Song, ex-ports of copper to Japan, where the metal was scarce,had caused a severe shortage in China, leading to a risein value of copper in relation to silver. By cutting offtrade with Japan, the Mongols intentionally or uninten-tionally stabilized the value of copper coins.

Gentry families that had previously prepared theirsons for the state examinations moved from their tra-ditional homes in the countryside to engage in urbancommerce, and city life began to cater to the tastes ofmerchants instead of scholars. Specialized shops sellingclothing, grape wine, furniture, and religiously butcheredmeats became common. Teahouses featured sing-songgirls, drum singers, operas, and other entertainmentspreviously considered coarse. Writers published worksin the style of everyday speech. And the increasing influ-ence of the northern, Mongolian-influenced Chineselanguage, often called Mandarin in the West, resulted inlasting linguistic change.

Cottage industries linked to the urban economiesdotted the countryside, where 90 percent of the peoplelived. Some villages cultivated mulberry trees and cottonusing dams, water wheels, and irrigation systems pat-terned in part on Middle Eastern models. Treatises onplanting, harvesting, threshing, and butchering werepublished. One technological innovator, Huang Dao Po˚,brought knowledge of cotton growing, spinning, andweaving from her native Hainan Island to the fertile

Yangzi Delta. Some villagers came to revere such innova-tors as local gods.

Yet on the whole, the countryside did poorly duringthe Yuan period. After the initial conquests, the Mongolprinces evicted many farmers and subjected the rest tobrutal tax collection. As in Iran under the Il-khans, by thetime the Yuan shifted to lighter taxes and encourage-ment of farming at the end of the 1200s, it was too late.Servitude or homelessness had overtaken many farmers.Neglect of dams and dikes caused disastrous flooding,particularly on the Yellow River.

According to Song records from before the Mongolconquest and the Ming census taken after their over-throw—each, of course, possibly subject to inaccuracyor exaggeration—China’s population may have shrunkby 40 percent during eighty years of Mongol rule, withmany localities in northern China losing up to five-sixthsof their inhabitants. Scholars have suggested severalcauses, not all of them directly associated with Mongolrule: prolonged warfare, privations in the countrysidecausing people to resort to female infanticide, a south-ward movement of people fleeing the Mongols, andflooding on the Yellow River. The last helps explain whylosses in the north exceeded those in the south andwhy the population along the Yangzi River markedlyincreased.

The bubonic plague and its attendant diseases,spread by the population movements, contributed aswell. The Mongol incorporation of Yunnan˚, a mountain-ous southwestern province where rodents commonlycarried bubonic plague, into the centralized provincialsystem of government exposed the lowlands to plague(see Map 12.1). Cities seem to have managed outbreaksof disease better than rural areas as the epidemic movedfrom south to north in the 1300s.

Government officials in YuanChina maintained regular con-tact with their counterpartsin Il-khan Iran and pursuedsimilar economic and financial

policies. While Chinese silks and porcelains affected elitetastes at the western end of the Silk Road, Il-khan engi-neering, astronomy, and mathematics reached Chinaand Korea. Just as Chinese painters taught Iranian artistsappealing new ways of drawing clouds, rocks, and trees,Muslims from the Middle East oversaw most of theweapons manufacture and engineering projects for

Cultural andScientificExchange

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Khubilai’s armies. Similarly, the Il-khans importedscholars and texts that helped them understand Chinesetechnological advances, including stabilized sightingtubes for precisely noting the positions of astronomicalobjects, mechanically driven armillary spheres thatshowed how the sun, moon, and planets moved in rela-tion to one another, and new techniques for measuringthe movement of the moon. And Khubilai brought Irani-ans to Beijing to construct an observatory and an insti-tute for astronomical studies similar to the Il-khans’facility at Maragheh. He made the state responsible formaintaining and staffing the observatory.

Muslim doctors and Persian medical texts—particu-larly in anatomy, pharmacology, and ophthalmology—circulated in China during the Yuan. Khubilai, whosuffered from alcoholism and gout, accorded high statusto doctors. New seeds and formulas from the MiddleEast stimulated medical practice. The traditional Chi-nese study of herbs, drugs, and potions came in for re-newed interest and publication.

In the 1340s power contestsbroke out among the Mongolprinces. Within twenty yearsfarmer rebellions and feuds

among the Mongols engulfed the land. Amidst thechaos, a charismatic Chinese leader, Zhu Yuanzhang˚,mounted a campaign that destroyed the Yuan Empireand brought China under control of his new empire, theMing, in 1368. Many Mongols—as well as the Muslims,Jews, and Christians who had come with them—remained in China, some as farmers or shepherds, someas high-ranking scholars and officials. Most of their de-scendants took Chinese names and became part of thediverse cultural world of China.

Many other Mongols, however, had never moved outof their home territories in Mongolia. Now they wel-comed back refugees from the Yuan collapse. ThoughTurkic peoples were becoming predominant in thesteppe region in the west of Central Asia, including terri-tories still ruled by descendants of Genghis Khan, Mon-gols retained control of Inner Asia, the steppe regionsbordering on Mongolia. Their reconcentration in this re-gion fostered a renewed sense of Mongol unity. SomeMongol groups adopted Islam; others favored TibetanBuddhism. But religious affiliation proved less impor-tant than Mongol identity.

The Ming thus fell short of dominating all the Mon-gols. The Mongols of Inner Asia paid tribute to the Mingonly to the extent that doing so facilitated their trade.

The Fall of theYuan Empire

The Mongols remained a continuing threat on the north-ern Ming frontier.

THE EARLY MING EMPIRE,1368–1500

The history of the Ming Empire raises questionsabout the overall impact of the Mongol era in China.

Just as historians of Russia and Iran divide over whetherMongol invasion and political domination retarded orstimulated the pace and direction of political and eco-nomic change, so historians of China have differingopinions about the Mongols. Since the Ming reestab-lished many practices that are seen as purely Chinese,they receive praise from people who ascribe central im-portance to Chinese traditions. On the other hand, his-torians who look upon the Mongol era as a pivotalhistorical moment when communication across the vastinterior of Eurasia served to bring east and west togethersometimes see the inward-looking Ming as less dynamicand productive than the Yuan.

Zhu Yuanzhang, a formermonk, soldier, and bandit, hadwatched his parents and otherfamily members die of famineand disease, conditions he

blamed on Mongol misrule. During the Yuan Empire’schaotic last decades, he vanquished rival rebels and as-sumed imperial power under the name Hongwu (r. 1368–1398). He ruled a highly centralized, militarily formida-ble empire.

Hongwu moved the capital to Nanjing˚ (“southerncapital”) on the Yangzi River, turning away from theMongol’s Beijing (“northern capital”; see Map 12.3).Though Zhu Yuanzhang the rebel had espoused a radicalBuddhist belief in a coming age of salvation, once inpower he used Confucianism to depict the emperor asthe champion of civilization and virtue, justified in mak-ing war on uncivilized “barbarians.”

Hongwu choked off the close relations with CentralAsia and the Middle East fostered by the Mongols and im-posed strict limits on imports and foreign visitors. Silverreplaced paper money for tax payments and commerce.These practices, illustrative of an anti-Mongol ideology,proved as economically unhealthy as some of the Yuaneconomic policies and did not last. Instead, the Ming gov-ernment gradually came to resemble the Yuan. Ming

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rulers retained the provincial structure and continued toobserve the hereditary professional categories of the Yuanperiod. Muslims made calendars and astronomical calcu-lations at a new observatory at Nanjing, a replica of Khu-bilai’s at Beijing. The Mongol calendar continued in use.

Continuities with the Yuan became more evident af-ter an imperial prince seized power through a coup d’état

to rule as the emperor Yongle˚ (r. 1403–1424). He re-turned the capital to Beijing, enlarging and improvingKhubilai’s imperial complex. The central area—the For-bidden City—acquired its present character, with moats,orange-red outer walls, golden roofs, and marble bridges.

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Yongle intended this combination fortress, religious site,bureaucratic center, and imperial residential park toovershadow Nanjing, and it survives today as China’smost imposing traditional architectural complex.

Yongle also restored commercial links with the Mid-dle East. Because hostile Mongols still controlled muchof the caravan route, Yongle explored maritime connec-tions. In Southeast Asia, Annam became a Ming provinceas the early emperors continued the Mongol program ofaggression. This focus on the southern frontier helpedinspire the naval expeditions of the trusted imperial eu-nuch Zheng He˚ from 1405 to 1433.

A Muslim whose father and grandfather had madethe pilgrimage to Mecca, Zheng He had a good knowl-edge of the Middle East; and his religion eased relationswith the states of the Indian subcontinent, where he di-rected his first three voyages. Subsequent expeditionsreached Hormuz on the Persian Gulf, sailed the south-ern coast of Arabia and the Horn of Africa (modern So-malia), and possibly reached as far south as the Strait ofMadagascar (see Map 12.3).

On early voyages he visited long-established Chi-nese merchant communities in Southeast Asia in orderto cement their allegiance to the Ming Empire and tocollect taxes. When a community on the island of Suma-tra resisted, he slaughtered the men to set an example.By pursuing commercial relations with the Middle Eastand possibly Africa, he also publicized Yongle’s reversalof Hongwu’s opposition to foreign trade.

The expeditions added some fifty new tributarystates to the Ming imperial universe, but trade did notincrease as dramatically. Sporadic embassies reachedBeijing from rulers in India, the Middle East, Africa, andSoutheast Asia. During one visit the ruler of Brunei˚died and received a grand burial at the Chinese capital.Occasional expeditions continued until the 1430s, afterthe death of both Yongle and Zheng He, when theystopped.

Having demonstrated such abilities at long-distancenavigation, why did the Chinese not develop seafaringfor commercial and military gain? Contemporaries con-sidered the voyages a personal project of Yongle, anupstart ruler who had always sought to prove his worthi-ness. Building the Forbidden City in Beijing and spon-soring gigantic encyclopedia projects might be taken toreflect a similar motivation. Yongle may also have beenemulating Khubilai Khan, who had sent enormous fleetsagainst Japan and Southeast Asia. This would fit with therumor spread by Yongle’s political enemies that he wasactually a Mongol.

A less speculative approach to the question startswith the fact that the new commercial opportunities fellshort of expectations, despite bringing foreign nationsinto the Ming orbit. In the meantime, Japanese coastalpiracy intensified, and Mongol threats in the north andwest grew. The human and financial demands of fortify-ing the north, redesigning and strengthening Beijing,and outfitting military expeditions against the Mongolsultimately took priority over the quest for maritimeempire.

Although innovation contin-ued in all areas of the Mingeconomy, advances were lessfrequent and less significant

than under the Song, particularly in agriculture. Agricul-tural production peaked around the mid-1400s and re-mained level for more than a century.

The Ming government limited mining, partly to re-inforce the value of metal coins and partly to control andtax the industry. Farmers had difficulty obtaining ironand bronze for farm implements. The peace that had fol-lowed the Mongol conquest resulted in a decline in tech-niques for making high-quality bronze and steel, whichwere especially used for weapons. Central Asian andMiddle Eastern technicians rather than Chinese cast thebronze instruments for Khubilai’s observatory at Beijing.Japan quickly surpassed China in the production of ex-tremely high-quality steel swords. Copper, iron, andsteel became expensive in Ming China, leading to a less-ened use of metal.

After the death of Emperor Yongle in 1424, ship-building also declined, and few advances occurred inprinting, timekeeping, and agricultural technology. Newweaving techniques did appear, but technological devel-opment in this field had peaked by 1500.

Reactivation of the examination system as a way ofrecruiting government officials (see Chapter 10) drewlarge numbers of educated, ambitious men into a re-newed study of the Confucian classics. This reduced thevitality of commerce, where they had previously beenemployed, just as population increase was creating a la-bor surplus. Records indicating a growth from 60 mil-lion at the end of the Yuan period in 1368 to nearly 100million by 1400 may not be entirely reliable, but rapidpopulation growth encouraged the production of sta-ples—wheat, millet, and barley in the north and rice inthe south—at the expense of commercial crops such ascotton that had stimulated many technological innova-tions under the Song. Staple crops yielded lower profits,which further discouraged capital improvements. New

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foods, such as sweet potatoes, became available butwere little adopted. Population growth in southern andcentral China caused deforestation and raised the priceof wood.

The Mongols that the Ming confronted in the northfought on horseback with simple weapons. The Mingfought back with arrows, scattershot mortars, and explo-sive canisters. They even used a few cannon, which theyknew about from contacts with the Middle East and laterwith Europeans (see Environment and Technology:From Gunpowder to Guns). Fearing that technologicalsecrets would get into enemy hands, the governmentcensored the chapters on gunpowder and guns in earlyMing encyclopedias. Shipyards and ports shut down toavoid contact with Japanese pirates and to prevent Chi-nese from migrating to Southeast Asia.

A technology gap with Korea and Japan opened upnevertheless. When superior steel was needed, suppliescame from Japan. Korea moved ahead of China in the de-sign and production of firearms and ships, in printingtechniques, and in the sciences of weather predictionand calendar making. The desire to tap the wealthy Mingmarket fueled some of these advances.

In the late 1300s and the 1400sthe wealth and consumerismof the early Ming stimulatedhigh achievement in literature,

the decorative arts, and painting. The Yuan period inter-est in plain writing had produced some of the world’searliest novels. This type of literature flourished under

The MingAchievement

the Ming. Water Margin, which originated in the raucousdrum-song performances loosely related to Chineseopera, features dashing Chinese bandits who struggleagainst Mongol rule, much as Robin Hood and his merrymen resisted Norman rule in England. Many authorshad a hand in the final print version.

Luo Guanzhong˚, one of the authors of Water Mar-gin, is also credited with Romance of the Three Kingdoms,based on a much older series of stories that in some waysresemble the Arthurian legends. It describes the at-tempts of an upright but doomed war leader and his fol-lowers to restore the Han Empire of ancient times andresist the power of the cynical but brilliant villain. Ro-mance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin ex-pressed much of the militant but joyous pro-Chinasentiment of the early Ming era and remain among themost appreciated Chinese fictional works.

Probably the best-known product of Ming techno-logical advance was porcelain. The imperial ceramic worksat Jingdezhen˚ experimented with new production tech-niques and new ways of organizing and rationalizingworkers. “Ming ware,” a blue-on-white style developedin the 1400s from Indian, Central Asian, and MiddleEastern motifs, became especially prized around theworld. Other Ming goods in high demand included fur-niture, lacquered screens, and silk, all eagerly trans-ported by Chinese and foreign merchants throughoutSoutheast Asia and the Pacific, India, the Middle East,and East Africa.

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Long before the invention of guns, gunpowder was usedin China and Korea to excavate mines, build canals, and

channel irrigation. Alchemists in China used related formu-las to make noxious gas pellets to paralyze enemies and ex-pel evil spirits. A more realistic benefit was eliminatingdisease-carrying insects, a critical aid to the colonization ofmalarial regions in China and Southeast Asia. The MongolEmpire staged fireworks displays on ceremonial occasions,delighting European visitors to Karakorum who saw themfor the first time.

Anecdotal evidence in Chinese records gives credit for theintroduction of gunpowder to a Sogdian Buddhist monk ofthe 500s. The monk described the wondrous alchemical

transformation of elements produced by a combination ofcharcoal and saltpeter. In this connection he also mentionedsulfur. The distillation of naphtha, a light, flammable deriv-ative of oil or coal, seems also to have been first developedin Central Asia, the earliest evidence coming from the Gand-hara region (in modern Pakistan).

By the eleventh century, the Chinese had developedflamethrowers powered by burning naphtha, sulfur, or gun-powder in a long tube. These weapons intimidated and in-jured foot soldiers and horses and also set fire to thatchedroofs in hostile villages and, occasionally, the rigging of en-emy ships.

In their long struggle against the Mongols, the Songlearned to enrich saltpeter to increase the amount of ni-trate in gunpowder. This produced forceful explosions ratherthan jets of fire. Launched from catapults, gunpowder-filled canisters could rupture fortifications and inflict masscasualties. Explosives hurled from a distance could sink orburn ships.

The Song also experimented with firing projectiles frommetal gun barrels. The earliest gun barrels were broad andsquat and were transported on special wagons to their em-placements. The mouths of the barrels projected saltpetermixed with scattershot minerals. The Chinese and then theKoreans adapted gunpowder to shooting masses of arrows—sometimes flaming—at enemy fortifications.

In 1280 weapons makers of the Yuan Empire producedthe first device featuring a projectile that completely filledthe mouth of the cannon and thus concentrated the explo-sive force. The Yuan used cast bronze for the barrel and ironfor the cannonball. The new weapon shot farther and moreaccurately, and was much more destructive, than the earlierSong devices.

Knowledge of the cannon and cannonball moved west-ward across Eurasia. By the end of the thirteenth centurycannon were being produced in the Middle East. By 1327small, squat cannon called “bombards” were being used inEurope.

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CENTRALIZATION AND

MILITARISM IN EAST ASIA,1200–1500

Korea, Japan, and Annam, the other major states ofEast Asia, were all affected by confrontation with the

Mongols, but with differing results. Japan and Annam es-caped Mongol conquest but changed in response to theMongol threat, becoming more effective and expansiveregimes with enhanced commitments to independence.

As for Korea, just as the Ming stressed Chinese tradi-tions and identity in the aftermath of Yuan rule, so Mon-gol domination contributed to revitalized interest inKorea’s own language and history. The Mongols con-quered Korea after a difficult war, and though Korea suf-fered socially and economically under Mongol rule,members of the elite associated closely with the YuanEmpire. After the fall of the Yuan, merchants continuedthe international connections established in the Mongolperiod, while Korean armies consolidated a new king-dom and fended off pirates.

In their effort to establish con-trol over all of China, the Mon-gols searched for coastal areasfrom which to launch naval ex-peditions and choke off the sea

trade of their adversaries. Korea offered such possibili-ties. When the Mongols attacked in 1231, the leader of aprominent Korean family assumed the role of militarycommander and protector of the king (not unlike theshoguns of Japan). His defensive war, which lasted overtwenty years, left a ravaged countryside, exhaustedarmies, and burned treasures, including the renownednine-story pagoda at Hwangnyong-sa˚ and the woodenprinting blocks of the Tripitaka˚, a ninth-century mas-terpiece of printing art. The commander’s underlingskilled him in 1258. Soon afterward the Koryo˚ king sur-rendered to the Mongols and became a subject monarchby linking his family to the Great Khan by marriage.

By the mid-1300s the Koryo kings were of mostlyMongol descent, and they favored Mongol dress, cus-toms, and language. Many lived in Beijing. The kings,their families, and their entourages often traveled be-tween China and Korea, thus exposing Korea to thephilosophical and artistic styles of Yuan China: neo-

Korea from theMongols to theYi, 1231–1500

Confucianism, Chan Buddhism (called Son in Korea),and celadon (light green) ceramics.

Mongol control was a stimulus after centuries ofcomparative isolation. Cotton began to be grown insouthern Korea; gunpowder came into use; and the art ofcalendar making, including eclipse prediction and vec-tor calculation, stimulated astronomical observationand mathematics. Celestial clocks built for the royal ob-servatory at Seoul reflected Central Asian and Islamic in-fluences more than Chinese. Avenues of advancementopened for Korean scholars willing to learn Mongolian,landowners willing to open their lands to falconry andgrazing, and merchants servicing the new royal ex-changes with Beijing. These developments contributedto the rise of a new landed and educated class.

When the Yuan Empire fell in 1368, the Koryo rulingfamily remained loyal to the Mongols and had to beforced to recognize the new Ming Empire. In 1392 the Yi˚established a new kingdom with a capital in Seoul andsought to reestablish a local identity. Like Russia andChina after the Mongols, the Yi regime publicly rejectedthe period of Mongol domination. Yet the Yi governmentcontinued to employ Mongol-style land surveys, taxa-tion in kind, and military garrison techniques.

Like the Ming emperors, the Yi kings revived thestudy of the Confucian classics, an activity that requiredknowledge of Chinese and showed the dedication of thestate to learning. This revival may have led to a key tech-nological breakthrough in printing technology.

Koreans had begun using Chinese woodblock print-ing in the 700s. This technology worked well in China,where a large number of buyers wanted copies of a com-paratively small number of texts. But in Korea, the com-paratively few literate men had interests in a wide rangeof texts. Movable wooden or ceramic type appeared inKorea in the early thirteenth century and may have beeninvented there. But the texts were frequently inaccurateand difficult to read. In the 1400s Yi printers, working di-rectly with the king, developed a reliable device to an-chor the pieces of type to the printing plate: theyreplaced the old beeswax adhesive with solid copperframes. The legibility of the printed page improved, andhigh-volume, accurate production became possible. Com-bined with the phonetic han’gul˚ writing system, thisprinting technology laid the foundation for a high liter-acy rate in Korea.

Yi publications told readers how to produce and usefertilizer, transplant rice seedlings, and engineer reser-voirs. Building on Eurasian knowledge imported by theMongols and introduced under the Koryo, Yi scholars

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Hwanghnyong-sa (hwahng-NEEYAHNG-sah)Tripitaka (tri-PIH-tah-kah) Koryo (KAW-ree-oh) Yi (YEE) han’gul (HAHN-goor)

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developed a meteorological science of their own. Theyinvented or redesigned instruments to measure windspeed and rainfall and perfected a calendar based onminute comparisons of the systems of China and the Is-lamic world.

In agriculture, farmers expanded the cultivation ofcash crops, the reverse of what was happening in MingChina. Cotton, the primary crop, enjoyed such highvalue that the state accepted it for tax payments. The Yiarmy used cotton uniforms, and cotton became the fa-vored fabric of the Korean civil elite. With cotton ginsand spinning wheels powered by water, Korea advancedmore rapidly than China in mechanization and began toexport considerable amounts of cotton to China andJapan.

Although both the Yuan and the Ming withheld theformula for gunpowder from the Korean government,Korean officials acquired the information by subterfuge.

By the later 1300s they had mounted cannon on shipsthat patrolled against pirates and used gunpowder-driven arrow launchers against enemy personnel andthe rigging of enemy ships. Combined with skills in ar-moring ships, these techniques made the small Yi navy aformidable defense force.

Having secured Korea, theMongols looked toward Japan,a target they could easily reachfrom Korea and a possible basefor controlling China’s south-

ern coast. Their first thirty-thousand-man invasion forcein 1274 included Mongol cavalry and archers and sailorsfrom Korea and northeastern Asia. Its weaponry includedlight catapults and incendiary and explosive projectilesof Chinese manufacture. The Mongol forces landed suc-

PoliticalTransformation inJapan, 1274–1500

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cessfully and decimated the Japanese cavalry, but a greatstorm on Hakata˚ Bay on the north side of Kyushu˚ Island(see Map 12.4) prevented the establishment of a beach-head and forced the Mongols to sail back to Korea.

The invasion deeply impressed Japan’s leaders andhastened social and political changes that were alreadyunder way. Under the Kamakura˚ Shogunate establishedin 1185—another powerful family actually exercisedcontrol—the shogun, or military leader, distributed landand privileges to his followers. In return they paid himtribute and supplied him with soldiers. This stable, butdecentralized, system depended on the balancing ofpower among regional warlords. Lords in the north andeast of Japan’s main island were remote from those in thesouth and west. Beyond devotion to the emperor and theshogun, little united them until the alien and terrifyingMongol threat materialized.

After the return of his fleet, Khubilai sent envoys toJapan demanding submission. Japanese leaders exe-cuted them and prepared for war. The shogun took stepsto centralize his military government. The effect was toincrease the influence of warlords from the south andwest of Honshu (Japan’s main island) and from the is-land of Kyushu, because this was where invasion seemedmost likely, and they were the local commanders actingunder the shogun’s orders.

Military planners studied Mongol tactics and re-trained and outfitted Japanese warriors for defenseagainst advanced weaponry. Farm laborers drafted fromall over the country constructed defensive fortificationsat Hakata and other points along the Honshu andKyushu coasts. This effort demanded, for the first time, anational system to move resources toward westernpoints rather than toward the imperial or shogunal cen-ters to the east.

The Mongols attacked in 1281. They brought 140,000warriors, including many non-Mongols, as well as thou-sands of horses, in hundreds of ships. However, the wallthe Japanese had built to cut off Hakata Bay from themainland deprived the Mongol forces of a reliable land-ing point. Japanese swordsmen rowed out and boardedthe Mongol ships lingering offshore. Their superb steelswords shocked the invaders. After a prolonged standoff,a typhoon struck and sank perhaps half of the Mongolships. The remainder sailed away, never again to harassJapan. The Japanese gave thanks to the “wind of theGods”—kamikaze˚—for driving away the Mongols.

Nevertheless, the Mongol threat continued to influ-ence Japanese development. Prior to his death in 1294,

Khubilai had in mind a third invasion. His successors didnot carry through with it, but the shoguns did not knowthat the Mongols had given up the idea of conqueringJapan. They rebuilt coastal defenses well into the four-teenth century, helping to consolidate the social positionof Japan’s warrior elite and stimulating the developmentof a national infrastructure for trade and communica-tion. But the Kamakura Shogunate, based on regionallycollected and regionally dispersed revenues, suffered fi-nancial strain in trying to pay for centralized road anddefense systems.

Between 1333 and 1338 the emperor Go-Daigobroke the centuries-old tradition of imperial seclusionand aloofness from government and tried to reclaimpower from the shoguns. This ignited a civil war that de-stroyed the Kamakura system. In 1338, with the Mongol

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Hakata (HAH-kah-tah) Kyushu (KYOO-shoo)Kamakura (kah-mah-KOO-rah) kamikaze (KUM-i-kuh-zee)

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tural productivity. Growing wealth and relative peacestimulated artistic creativity, mostly reflecting Zen Bud-dhist beliefs held by the warrior elite. In the simple ele-gance of architecture and gardens, in the contemplativelandscapes of artists like Sesshu Toyo, and in the eerie,stylized performances of the No theater, the unified aes-thetic code of Zen became established in the Ashikagaera.

Despite the technological advancement, artisticproductivity, and rapid urbanization of this period,

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Ashikaga (ah-shee-KAH-gah)

threat waning, the Ashikaga Shogunate˚, took controlat the imperial center of Kyoto.

Provincial warlords enjoyed renewed indepen-dence. Around their imposing castles, they sponsoredthe development of market towns, religious institu-tions, and schools. The application of technologiesimported in earlier periods, including water wheels,improved plows, and Champa rice, increased agricul-

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competition among warlords and their followers led toregional wars. By the later 1400s these conflicts resultedin the near destruction of the warlords. The great OninWar in 1477 left Kyoto devastated and the AshikagaShogunate a central government in name only. Ambi-tious but low-ranking warriors, some with links to tradewith the continent, began to scramble for control of theprovinces.

After the fall of the Yuan in 1368 Japan resumedtrade with China and Korea. Japan exported raw materi-als as well as folding fans, invented in Japan during theperiod of isolation, and swords. Japan’s primary importsfrom China were books and porcelain. The volatile polit-ical environment in Japan gave rise to partnerships be-tween warlords and local merchants. All worked tostrengthen their own towns and treasuries through over-seas commerce or, sometimes, through piracy.

Before the first Mongol attackin 1257, the states of An-nam (northern Vietnam) andChampa (southern Vietnam)had clashed frequently. Annam

(once called Dai Viet) looked toward China and had oncebeen subject to the Tang. Chinese political ideas, socialphilosophies, dress, religion, and language heavily influ-enced its official culture. Champa related more closely tothe trading networks of the Indian Ocean; its official cul-ture was strongly influenced by Indian religion, language,architecture, and dress. Champa’s relationship with Chinadepended in part on how close its enemy Annam was toChina at any particular time. During the Song period An-nam was neither formally subject to China nor particularlythreatening to Champa militarily, so Champa inaugurateda trade and tribute relationship with China that spreadfast-ripening Champa rice throughout East Asia.

The Mongols exacted submission and tribute fromboth Annam and Champa until the fall of the Yuan Em-pire in 1368. Mongol political and military ambitionswere mostly focused elsewhere, however, which mini-mized their impact on politics and culture. The two Viet-namese kingdoms soon resumed their warfare. WhenAnnam moved its army to reinforce its southern border,Ming troops occupied the capital, Hanoi, and installed apuppet government. Almost thirty years elapsed beforeAnnam regained independence and resumed a tributarystatus. By then the Ming were turning to meet Mongolchallenges to their north. In a series of ruthless cam-paigns, Annam terminated Champa’s independence,and by 1500 the ancestor of the modern state of Vietnam,still called Annam, had been born.

The Emergenceof Vietnam,1200–1500

The new state still relied on Confucian bureaucraticgovernment and an examination system, but some prac-tices differed from those in China. The Vietnamese legalcode, for example, preserved group landowning and de-cision making within the villages, as well as women’sproperty rights. Both developments probably had rootsin an early rural culture based on the growing of rice inwet paddies; by this time the Annamese consideredthem distinctive features of their own culture.

CONCLUSION

Despite their brutality and devastation, the Mongolconquests brought a degree of unity to the lands

between China and Europe that had never before beenknown. Nomadic mobility and expertise in military tech-nology contributed to communication across vast spacesand initially, at least, an often-callous disregard for thewelfare of farmers, as manifested in oppressive tax poli-cies. Trade, on the other hand, received active Mongolstimulation through the protection of routes and en-couragement of industrial production. The Mongolregimes were characterized by an unprecedented open-ness, employing talented people irrespective of theirlinguistic, ethnic, or religious affiliations. As a conse-quence, the period of comparative Mongol unity, whichlasted less than a century, saw a remarkable exchange ofideas, techniques, and products across the breadth ofEurasia. Chinese gunpowder spurred the developmentof Ottoman and European cannon; Muslim astronomersintroduced new instruments and mathematical tech-niques to Chinese observatories.

However, rule over dozens of restive peoples couldnot endure. Where Mongol military enterprise reached itslimit of expansion, it stimulated local aspirations for inde-pendence. Division and hostility among branches ofGenghis Khan’s family—between the Yuan in China andthe Jagadai in Central Asia or between the Golden Hordein Russia and the Il-khans in Iran—provided opportuni-ties for achieving these aspirations. The Russians gainedfreedom from Mongol domination in western Eurasia,and the general political disruption and uncertainty of theMongol era assisted the emergence of the Lithuanian, Ser-bian, and Ottoman states. In the east, China, Korea, andAnnam similarly found renewed political identity in theaftermath of Mongol rule, while Japan fought off twoMongol invasions and transformed its internal politicaland cultural identity in the process. In every case, the real-ity or threat of Mongol attack and domination encouragedcentralization of government, improvement of military

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techniques, and renewed stress on local cultural identity.Thus, in retrospect, despite its traditional association withdeath and destruction, the Mongol period appears as awatershed establishing new connections between wide-spread parts of Eurasia and leading to the development ofstrong, assertive, and culturally creative regional states.

■ Key TermsMongols tsar

Genghis Khan Ottoman Empire

nomadism Khubilai Khan

Yuan Empire lama

bubonic plague Beijing

Il-khan Ming Empire

Golden Horde Yongle

Timur Zheng He

Rashid al-Din Yi

Nasir al-Din Tusi kamikaze

Alexander Nevskii Ashikaga Shogunate

■ Suggested ReadingDavid Morgan’s The Mongols (1986) affords an accessible intro-duction to the Mongol Empire. Morgan and Reuven Amitai-Preiss have also edited a valuable collection of essays, TheMongol Empire and Its Legacy (2000). Thomas T. Allsen has writ-ten more-specialized studies: Mongol Imperialism: The Policiesof the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia, and the IslamicLands, 1251–1259 (1987); Commodity and Exchange in theMongol Empire: A Cultural History of Islamic Textiles (2002);and Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (2001). LarryMoses and Stephen A. Halkovic, Jr., Introduction to MongolianHistory and Culture (1985) links early and modern Mongol his-tory and culture. Tim Severin, In Search of Chinggis Khan(1992), revisits the paths of Genghis’s conquests.

William H. McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples (1976) outlines thedemographic effects of the Mongol conquests, and Joel Mokyrdiscusses their technological impact in The Lever of Riches:Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (1990). Con-nections between commercial development in Europe andEurasian trade routes of the Mongol era within a broad theoret-ical framework inform Janet L. Abu-Lughod’s Before EuropeanHegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350 (1989).

The only “primary” document relating to Genghis Khan, SecretHistory of the Mongols, has been reconstructed in Mongolianfrom Chinese script and has been variously produced in schol-arly editions by Igor de Rachewilz and Francis WoodmanCleaves, among others. Paul Kahn produced a readable proseEnglish paraphrase of the work in 1984. Biographies of GenghisKhan include Leo de Hartog, Genghis Khan, Conqueror of theWorld (1989); Michel Hoang, Genghis Khan, trans. Ingrid Can-field (1991); and Paul Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and

Legacy, trans. and ed. Thomas Nivison Haining (1992), which ismost detailed on Genghis’s childhood and youth.

On Central Asia after the conquests see S. A. M. Adshead, CentralAsia in World History (1993). The most recent scholarly study ofTimur is Beatrice Manz, The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (1989).

David Christian, A History of Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia(1998), and Charles Halperin, Russia and the Golden Horde: TheMongol Impact on Medieval Russian History (1987), provideone-volume accounts of the Mongols in Russia. A more de-tailed study is John Lister Illingworth Fennell, The Crisis of Me-dieval Russia, 1200–1304 (1983). See also Donald Ostrowski,Muscovy and the Mongols: Cross-Cultural Influences on theSteppe Frontier (1998). Religion forms the topic of Devin De-Weese, Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde(1994).The Cambridge History of Iran: Volume 5, The Saljuq andMongol Periods, ed. J. A. Boyle (1968) and Volume 6, TheTimurid and Safavid Periods, eds. Peter Jackson and LaurenceLockhart (rprt 2001) contain detailed scholarly articles coveringthe period in Iran and Central Asia.

Translations from the great historians of the Il-khan period in-clude Juvaini, ’Ala al-Din ’Ata Malek, The History of the World-Conqueror, trans. John Andrew Boyle (1958), and Rashid al-Din,The Successors of Genghis Khan, trans. John Andrew Boyle(1971). The greatest traveler of the time was Ibn Battuta; seeC. Defremery and B. R. Sanguinetti, eds., The Travels of Ibn Bat-tuta, A.D. 1325–1354, translated with revisions and notes fromthe Arabic text by H. A. R. Gibb (1994), and Ross E. Dunn, TheAdventures of Ibn Battuta, a Muslim Traveler of the 14th Century(1986).

On Europe’s Mongol encounter see James Chambers, The Devil’sHorsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe (1979). ChristopherDawson, ed., Mission to Asia (1955; reprinted 1981), assemblessome of the best-known European travel accounts. See alsoMarco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo (many editions), and thecontroversial skeptical appraisal of his account in FrancesWood, Did Marco Polo Really Go to China? (1995). Morris Ross-abi’s Visitor from Xanadu (1992) deals with the European trav-els of Rabban Sauma, a Christian Turk.

For China under the Mongols see Morris Rossabi’s KhubilaiKhan: His Life and Times (1988). On the Mongol impact oneconomy and technology in Yuan and Ming China see MarkElvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past (1973); Joseph Needham,Science in Traditional China (1981). Also see the important in-terpretation of Ming economic achievement in Andre GunderFrank, ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age (1998).

The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 8, The Ming Dynasty1368–1644, part 2, ed. Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote(1998), provides scholarly essays about a little studied period.See also Albert Chan, The Glory and Fall of the Ming Dynasty(1982), and Edward L. Farmer, Early Ming Government: TheEvolution of Dual Capitals (1976).

On early Ming literature see Lo Kuan-chung, Three Kingdoms: AHistorical Novel Attributed to Luo Guanzhong, translated andannotated by Moss Roberts (1991); Pearl Buck’s translation of

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Water Margin, entitled All Men Are Brothers, 2 vols. (1933), anda later translation by J. H. Jackson, Water Margin, Written byShih Nai-an (1937); and Shelley Hsüeh-lun Chang, Historyand Legend: Ideas and Images in the Ming Historical Novels(1990).

Joseph R. Levenson, ed., European Expansion and the Counter-Example of Asia, 1300–1600 (1967), recounts the Zheng He ex-peditions. Philip Snow’s The Star Raft (1988) contains morerecent scholarship, while Louise Levathes, When China Ruledthe Seas (1993) makes for lively reading.

For a general history of Korea in this period see Andrew C.Nahm, Introduction to Korean History and Culture (1993); Ki-Baik Lee, A New History of Korea (1984); and William E. Henthorn,Korea: The Mongol Invasions (1963). On a more specializedtopic see Joseph Needham et al., The Hall of Heavenly Records:Korean Astronomical Instruments and Clocks, 1380–1780 (1986).

For a collection of up-to-date scholarly essays on Japan, seeKozo Yamamura, ed., The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 3:Medieval Japan (1990). See also John W. Hall and ToyodaTakeshi, eds., Japan in the Muromachi Age (1977); H. Paul Var-ley, trans., The Onin War: History of Its Origins and Backgroundwith a Selective Translation of the Chronicle of Onin (1967); Ya-mada Nakaba, Ghenko, the Mongol Invasion of Japan, with anIntroduction by Lord Armstrong (1916); and the novel Fûtô byInoue Yasushi, translated by James T. Araki as Wind and Waves(1989).

■ Notes1. Quotation adapted from Desmond Martin, Chingis Khan

and His Conquest of North China (Baltimore: The JohnHopkins Press, 1950), 303.

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DOCUMENT 5Astronomy and Engineering (photo, p. 306)

DOCUMENT 6Movable Type (photo, p. 318)

What passages from Document 3 illustrate theauthor’s view of Mongol domination? How doesthe author’s role as an Iranian historian affectthe reliability of the document? What additionaltypes of documents would help you understand therole of Mongol dominance in the integration ofEurasia?

Document-Based QuestionThe Integration of MongolEurasia Using the following documents, analyze the role ofMongol dominance in the integration of Eurasia.

DOCUMENT 1Excerpt from Genghis Khan (p. 295)

DOCUMENT 2Mongol Politics, Mongol Women (Diversity andDominance, pp. 298–299)

DOCUMENT 3Map 12.1 The Mongol Domains in Eurasia in 1300 (p. 301

DOCUMENT 4Passport (photo, p. 302)

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